Is "The news are very encouraging" correct?

Why

Karan's rule — words ending in "-s" are plural, so they need a plural verb — is genuinely how most such words work: "books are", "cats are". "News" happens to be one of a handful of English words that ends in "-s" purely by spelling accident, without actually being plural in meaning — it refers to one single thing, a body of information, not a group of separate "new" items being counted. Because it's grammatically singular despite its spelling, it always takes a singular verb: "the news is good", never "the news are good", regardless of how the word happens to be spelled. Test: notice that you never say "one new" or "two news" the way you'd count real plural nouns — "news" simply doesn't split into countable units, which is exactly the sign of a hidden singular. His friend is right: "news" looks plural because of its "-s" ending, but it takes a singular verb because it names one single thing, not many.